


Blackout

by MarkoftheAsphodel



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Family Issues, Multi, Self-Destruction, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4749548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/pseuds/MarkoftheAsphodel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur schooled himself in wind magic, but once enmeshed in the Holy War, he begins to delve into his innate talent for thunder magic. Before long, he pushes his gifts to the limit- and starts to notice unforeseen and unpleasant side effects.  Revision of an unfinished piece posted at FFNet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ced the Hero

Flashes of light, like the sparks thrown off by a stoked fire, floated through Arthur's head in the moments before he opened his eyes.  For a moment they still seemed to hang there in front of him, a netting of bright flecks draped across his face, but then they cleared.  Arthur sat up and slid his bare feet onto the cool tile floor of his bedchamber.

Their bedchamber.  Johalvier was still burrowed under the blankets on the other side of the room.  Like all the gang raised in Isaach, Johalvier thought that the tail end of a Manster summer was unpleasantly chill.  Arthur, for his part, found the crisp morning air the nicest weather he’d experienced since leaving Silesse; the winds coming down the towering mountains of Thracia felt _almost_ like the winds he’d left behind. 

Arthur decided to take a walk before the sun got too high and the air warmed up.  Part of it was that he wanted to feel that brisk air against his legs just then, and part of it was that his head felt strangely fuzzy despite the full night’s sleep, and he wanted it cleared.  The view of Manster from its city walls was a pleasant one-- jagged peaks to the east, outlined by the rising sun, a soft grayish-blue sky that hinted of rain to the west, and a city of people going about their business below.  Arthur liked cities best that way, at a slight remove, where the voices weren’t right in his ears and elbows and feet didn’t jostle him.  From this height, the city just looked and smelled better and he noticed the festive decorations going up on the walls more than he did the scars and signs of decay.

When he turned up for breakfast in the Great Hall of Manster Palace, Arthur found a festival mood in progress there, too.  The full moon of that September was to fall on the very day that light and dark reigned in equal measure, and both Lord Seliph’s army and the people they’d liberated took this as a portent of good things to come.  

Arthur glanced around the room; his sister was sitting with Prince Leif and his retinue, while Lord Seliph broke bread with Lewyn and his other advisors.  The remainder of the girls were at one table, while the young men were likewise off on their own.  Prince Ares, the so-called Black Knight, had a seat by himself, positioned where he could look out the window and have an excuse not to speak to anyone.  Arthur considered doing the same, but after a last glance at the back of his sister’s head, he took a chair at the table with the “young lords” of Seliph’s army.

And most of them were lords, as they’d found out.  Faval, heir to the duchy of Jungby, bent over a platter of sausages.  Faval’s cousin Lester, who’d been the presumed heir of said duchy until Faval turned up, picking bits of shell from his boiled egg.  Johalvier, who’d inherit the house of Dozel as soon as they’d tracked down and dealt with his brother Brian.  Ulster, younger prince of Isaach through his mother.  Dermott, younger prince of Nordion through _his_ mother.

And then there was Ced, who was almost certainly the heir to something but he hadn’t admitted it yet.  He was sitting just a little bit away from the others-- not an offensive distance like Ares, but just enough to... to observe, Arthur decided.  He wondered offhand if Ced also liked to take walks around the city walls to look over Manster from a height.

Arthur sat down, pushing his chair back far enough to that he and Ced made a mirror of one another across the table.  The young lords appeared to all be discussing what they did back home for the harvest festival.

"In Isaach, we..."

"Mother said that in Grandbell they..."

"Here in Manster everyone..."

In Northern Thracia, people celebrated their grain, the wealth of their fertile prairies.  Tinni had told him of it, of how the last stand of wheat to be cut got paraded through the streets of Alster, how they made a manikin from the bundle of stalks and gave him a seat at the high table.

In occupied Silesse they didn't celebrate the grain, because the empire took the last stand and all the rest of it too.  Yet even in Arthur's village they'd had races and tournaments to celebrate the end of summer.  Arthur had entered the tournament two years running; the first year he did miserably, knocked off his feet in the opening round, but the second time Arthur and his battered book of wind spells had made it to the victor's place beneath the canopy and he'd gotten a kiss from the girl who'd won the pegasus race.

"And what did you do in Silesse, Arthur?"

Dermott asked it, politely reminding everyone that Arthur had been a Silessian most of his life and didn't just belong in the box labeled "fugitive Grandbellian noble" along with Lester and Faval and their sisters.

Arthur explained about the races, making it sound far grander than it did, leaving out that the races and the tournaments had been banned under occupation.  But he remembered how they'd been when he was a little boy, and he embellished the story with details from old Tuva’s tales of her girlhood in the last golden days of Crusader Ced’s reign.

Once or twice, Arthur looked at the other Ced, the one across the table, to see the other man’s reaction to these fabulous accounts of the pegasus races.  Ced’s face showed almost nothing-- no suspicion, no telltale disbelief-- but about halfway through Arthur’s account Ced began to tap his fingers against the table.  It gave Arthur the same sensation as watching sand slip through an hour-glass-- _time’s up.  You can stop it now._

But everyone else appeared to believe whatever Arthur told them, and once he’d finished, they went on happily to the topic of what they could do this particular holiday in the free and grateful city of Manster.

“On the equinox, spirits are supposed to pass freely from their world into ours,” said a wide-eyed Ulster.  “In Isaach, we always had our fortunes for the season told.”

"There’s a fortune-teller down in the town square by the pawn shop," said Faval.  "I oughta go to him.  Maybe he can tell me where mum went and who our dad was."

"Oh, those old charlatans don't know anything," replied Lester.  “Mother said they all have tricks to make you think they’re seeing the future, but none of these market-square seers are holy men.  You’d be better off finding a priest.”

“You’re in Manster,” Faval replied with a jaded air.  “Honest priests got run out of here a long time ago.  You should come with me, Lester."

"Me?  I don't need to ask some old fraud about my parents.  Mother's safe in Tirnanog and Father died at Belhalla protecting her."

Arthur watched the antics of the cousins feeling more than a little jaded himself... but he did notice Dermott rolling his eyes at Lester's statement.  It stayed with him even after the rest of the morning’s conversation faded from his mind.

* * *

Arthur did notice that Ced didn’t say a thing about whatever childhood celebrations he’d enjoyed at harvest time.  Ced spoke only of what people in Manster did when they weren’t being rounded up by imperial troops.  Typical Ced, Arthur thought, for all that he’d known the man for less than a week.  They’d found him _in_ Manster, and he dressed like the people of Manster and halfway talked like it, but he wasn’t _from_ there.  The citizens there in Manster called him "Ced the Hero" while their hero merely called himself Ced and gave evasive responses about who and what he was if anyone asked.  

Arthur kept an eye on the green-haired sage (such an unconvincing Thracian he made with that hair!) for some time that day, and was more than a little pleased to learn that Ced did, indeed, go for walks on the city walls.  It made a good place to corner Ced, though the sage didn’t seem in the least rattled when Arthur called out to him. 

“What’s your game?”

“I don’t play games.”

There was something wrong with one of his eyes, something disconcerting about it that made Arthur not want to look too closely.

"You're not fooling me.  You can’t have fooled anyone-- nobody in this place would name their kid after the Silessian wind god."

"Nobody?"  Ced smiled a little at Arthur’s words.  "I'd say it's about as likely as a Silessian youth with a name more common in these parts."

“My mum was from Grannvale.”  

“Obviously.”  And Ced gestured towards the pale hair that cascaded well past Arthur’s shoulders.

“So what are you, then?  A man with a Silessian name and knowledge of Silessian magic who turns up here at the far edges of the empire?”

“I was looking for someone and ended up here,” replied Ced.  “I’m told you were also looking for someone close to you... and ended up here.”

Ced’s eyes were two fingers above Arthur’s and Ced had that disconcerting... _thing_ in his eye.  Arthur looked away first, and Ced took that opportunity to leave.

* * *

Prince Leif stole Tinni at dinnertime, too, so Arthur joined the young lords yet again.  The evening meal wasn’t nearly as festive as the morning had been; Ulster slouched at the end of the table with a pale, blotched face and red eyes.

"What's with him?" Arthur whispered to Johalvier.

"He went to see the fortune-teller to find out if he had a chance with Miss Julia," Johalvier replied.  "Heard instead that his mother's been dead all this time."

"Ah."

Arthur looked on as Dermott and Lester both attempted to comfort their friend; for his own part, Arthur felt profoundly unmoved by Ulster's sorrow.  Wasn’t it Ulster’s own fault for hoping against hope that his mother was alive?  Or his own fault for going to see the “market-square seer” and trying to divine his future?  Ulster ought to be glad he had a healthy, pretty sister and an elder cousin who looked out for them both.

Arthur heard Ulster moan, "How'm I going to tell Larcei?" as he ceased to pay attention to anything going on at that end of the table.  Nobody-- not Faval, not even Johalvier--  was in a lighthearted mood that night, and at the end of the meal they all drifted away, silent as cats.

Yet, as he turned to go, Arthur felt a tug upon his sleeve.  He looked back to see a quiff of dark blonde hair and a pair of brown eyes.

“Hey, Dermott.”

“Do you want to take a walk?” asked the prince of Nordion.  “I’d go back to the room with Ulster, but I don’t know how much more to say to him.”

The idea of another brisk walk through the evening air sounded good to Arthur, and besides that, he’d noticed the spots of light in front of his eyes at dinner.  Maybe a good walk would tire him out to the point where he had some proper sleep...

"Yeah, that's rough," was what he said to Dermott by way of agreement.   "You got some bad news about your mum recently, too."

"Lost in the desert?  Yeah.  But Lewyn told me afterward that she's not dead... just in some place where we can't reach her."  Dermott looked remarkably unbruised by the news.  "I just have the feeling I'll see her again.  Here in this world, I mean, not like..."

"Lucky you."  The words came out sour, but Arthur couldn’t help himself.  The look Dermott shot him in return was so empathetic that Arthur decide to accept the silent apology that Dermott offered, and instead of heading off alone into the dark, Arthur decided to keep their conversation going.

"What's that funny look you get on your face whenever Lester goes on about his dad the chivalrous bow knight?"

"Oh, that."  Dermott brushed at a stray lock of hair with the back of his hand.  "I guess 'funny' is the word for it, but I remember once long ago, I heard Shanan and Oifaye talking about how weird it was that Lester looked so much like Lex of Dozel."

"Lex?"

"Yeah.  He was one of the Grannvale nobles with Sir Sigurd.  I remember hearing he was a friend of your mother's-- him and Lord Azel of Velthomer.  They all knew each other way back when.  Come to think of it, he'd be Johalvier's uncle, too." 

"Is that so?  Did he get blasted at Belhalla with the rest of them?" asked Arthur, interest piqued by the reference to his own mother.

"No.  Mother Aideen said that Lex and his sweetheart left before then, right around the time your mother and Lady Erin went to Silesse.  So maybe he's out there somewhere, and Lester doesn't know it."

"Heh.  It wouldn't be the first time somebody got their world turned upside down." This idea did not bother Arthur in the least.

"And it won't be the last," Dermott agreed, once more seeming content with it all.  "Are you okay, Arthur?  You’ve seemed a bit off since we got to Manster."

"Oh, so that's why you're sticking around to talk to me.  Yeah, I'm fine.  Maybe I could do with sleeping better."

“Ah.  Yes, we’ve seen you dropping out in conversations a couple of times this last week.

“You have?”

“Not often,” Dermott said quickly.  “Just a few times, you didn’t seem to be following us.”

“Right.  Thanks for your concern, Dermott.  I’ll try to... not do that.”

As much as that conversation set Arthur on edge, he seemed to sleep normally that night.  The sparks of light weren’t there when he woke in the morning, and Dermott and the rest didn’t act as though anything were amiss with Arthur at breakfast.

Then again... how would Arthur know, exactly?

“I’m going down to the arena today,” he announced to the rest.  “Anyone else want to come?”

“Sure,” said Faval with a yawn. “Need the money, again...”  

Faval burned through money like mad, though most of it went to keep the holy bow he’d inherited from his mother in good repair.  Only Prince Ares went through money faster, as far as Arthur could tell.

In truth, Arthur didn’t need the money.  His Wind and Thunder tomes never cost a lot to get repaired, and he’d cleaned up at the arenas in Melgen and Alster.  But something in Arthur made him want to prove himself, to prove he’d come just fine out of their last string of battles, that he wasn’t “off.”

Ced, though, showed him that little smile again.  

“Not quite the same as the harvest tournaments back home, is it?”

“Hell, no,” Arthur replied.  “Going to give it a shot today?”

“I might,” Ced admitted.

“Great.  Meet you at the gates in an hour, then.”

He was only a little surprised that Ced kept the appointment.  As they waited for their turns in the ring, Ced brought up the harvest tournaments again, but this time he was serious.  Arthur, half-hoping to trap Ced into an admission of his secret identity, spoke freely of the tournaments he’d actually been in-- not massive festivals with prizes of silver and gold, but vicious matches against some truly shady opponents, some of whom used _dark_ magic.

“I’m not even sure how I got to the final round last year.  Every time I was about to lose and go down, my opponent would just... miss.  Sometimes a couple of shots in a row; it was like being on the verge of defeat gave me the strength to make me untouchable, and then I’d let them have it.”

“Really.”  

“Yeah.  And the last guy I dealt with was a real son of a... well, he had a Hel tome under his cloak.  You know that one?”

“I don’t _practice_ it,” corrected Ced.  “But I know of it, yes.”

“Yeah, well that one left me basically dead.  I was down on my knees with this dark mist closing in around me...”

It took only a little effort to push himself back to that moment, of being there in the hard-packed dirt of the ring, head lolling to the side as his leaden limbs refused to obey any commands.  Arthur could still feel the _hate_ in the words that had popped into his head then.

_Not today.  I've come too far.  Not this time, you smirking bastard._

He remembered the surge of energy that filled him then, remembered rising up from the ring with his tome clenched in a death-grip even as his sneaking adversary brought out the Elwind tome that was supposed to be his legitimate weapon in the match.  The green waves flowed around Arthur, rustling his clothes without touching his flesh, and Arthur had enough time to see the shock in his opponent's eyes before he unleashed a return volley that took his opponent clear out of the ring, out of the match...

"I damn near killed him.  After that, I knew I was ready to go out and find my family."

“Is that so?"

Ced actually looked impressed.  Or disturbed.  Arthur couldn’t tell, and he still didn’t want to look too closely at that oddly green damaged eye.

* * *

 

He’d miscalculated.  This swordmaster was going to cleave Arthur in two with the broad silver blade.  They’d take him back to Tinni in pieces.

Arthur managed to swerve away from Xenon’s next strike, but he’d already lost enough blood to be dizzy, and his opponent was _fast_... and surprisingly strong.  Even when Arthur struck him with a bolt of Thunder that should’ve laid the man out, Xenon kept on his feet, kept dancing.  His resilience enraged Arthur.

“Come on and get me!” he shouted.  

Xenon did, knocking Arthur back with a blow that left him dazed and bent double.  It didn’t hurt as much as it _should’ve_... always a bad sign.

“Feh.”  Arthur tasted blood in his mouth.  “I wanted you to do that.”

And, in spite of the pain rippling down one side, he managed to stand up straight with his shoulders back.

"You see, I fight better when I'm angry."

Xenon’s blade should’ve finished Arthur off, but the silver edge caught only empty air, and then a massive blast of Thunder magic illuminated the entire arena.  When the light dimmed, Xenon was the one hauled away for healing.  

Not that Arthur was in much better shape.  He raised his arm to the roars of the crowd, but he couldn’t really see any of his audience.  Blotches of pale light in front of his eyes made it impossible to see anything, and he stumbled back as the pain returned to overwhelm him.

Someone caught him, someone with a healing staff to patch up the wounds in his arm and his side.

“Ced?”

The healing didn’t help the spots in his vision.

“Good, you’re awake.”

“I’ve been awake the whole time.”

“No.  You lost consciousness for a few moments there.”

“Mm.”  Arthur thought his right eye had better vision than the left.  “I didn’t notice.”

“That’s what worries me.  What were you doing there?”

“Winning.”

He won four thousand in gold and the arena boss’s admonition to not come back.  That made thirteen thousand and five hundred pieces of gold earned in one morning-- not bad, considering.  Arthur did not, however, ask what Ced had won, or how easily he’d won it.      

Especially not after Ced mother-henned him all the way back to the palace and insisted Arthur go straight to bed.

“Hey, leave me alone.  I’ve done this before.”

“I hope not,” Ced replied as he propelled Arthur into the door of the bedroom.

“I’m glad Johalvier isn’t here to see you doing this,” said Arthur.

“Do you seriously not understand what you’re doing to yourself?  Allowing yourself to be beaten down to the edge of death just to channel more power than you can handle isn’t a battle strategy.”

"I understand just fine.  I’ve been doing this for years.  Like I told Xenon, I have strength in my anger."  He really did want to lay down, but Arthur wasn’t even going to think of it until Ced left him alone.

"That's not the way."  Sometimes Arthur found it hard to believe that he and Ced were the same age-- especially when Ced was acting like this, stone-faced and making pronouncements like a high priest. "Wind magic is inherently less destructive to the user than fire or thunder magic.  What you could do as a student with an elementary wind spell you can't do with Elthunder!"

“I _am_ using elementary magic.  Elthunder is Tinni’s specialty.”  And his mother’s Thoron tome was beyond him at present, not that Arthur planned to admit it.  

"It’s still thunder magic.  Fire and thunder are not your friends-- it's no accident that Valflame and Mjolnir are both in the hands of our enemies."

"How can you be so sure, Ced the Hero?  I mean, Ced the Liar."

"I'm not lying."

The defensive edge to his voice did Arthur some good.

"You're not telling the truth, either.  That green flash in your eye is the holy mark of Forseti.  You're Silesse's prince."  Ced didn’t protest it, didn’t deny it, but the downturn of his mouth gave everything away.  "I don't know where you're hiding the tome, but I already figured out that your heroic feats were possible thanks to Forseti's powers.  I've seen every kind of wind magic there is-- except that-- and nothing I've seen matches up to the stories about your single-handed defense of the gates of Manster.  Nothing else makes the sky turn green."

Arthur meant to stay on his feet until Ced got the hell out of his room, but suddenly he was sprawled on the bed with one boot on, one boot off, and his hair tangled all around him. The sparks were going off in his eyes again.

“I want to sleep now,” he said, and rolled away so he wasn’t facing Ced anymore.  Still, he couldn’t escape the range of Ced’s voice.

"We're not here by accident, Arthur.  We're holy warriors-- Sir Seliph, Prince Leif and Prince Ares, you, me, the Jungbys, Johalvier, Prince Shanan and his cousins.  Each of us has been blessed with the talents we need to see this war through and to liberate Jugdral from Southern Thracia to Upper Silesse.  But our enemies have talents, too... and these gifts can destroy us, corrupting us as our enemies have been corrupted."

Arthur closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, but Ced had one more piece of advice for him.

"Don't fight with your anger, Arthur."  

Arthur remained where he was, eyes shut tight, until long after the sound of Ced’s footsteps faded away.


	2. Riding Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Liberation Army progresses deeper into Thracia, Arthur gets a bright idea... which leads to some information about his past that's relevant to the strange things happening to him now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains references to a past suicide. There will be other references to the same event later in the narrative. FYI.

The upside of being on bed rest for the remainder of the day was that Tinni broke away from the attentions of Prince Leif and spent her time cosseting Arthur instead.She had the cooks of Manster Palace make something close to the thin Silessian pancakes that Arthur liked to eat with berries and cream.As Arthur was in fact quite hungry after his exploits in the arena that morning, he polished the pancakes off without any trouble and then spent an while just relaxing in Tinni’s company.Nobody bothered them-- not Johalvier, not Prince Leif, and not Ced the Hero.Tinni had only good things to say about Arthur’s success against Xenon and his other opponents, and for a time Arthur felt that the entire adventure was probably worth it. 

Only after some time did Arthur squint up at his sister and notice that the bright ribbons woven through her two long plaits weren’t the right color.Instead of the red of House Freege, they were blue-- the same shade as the flag of Leonster.Was she changing her hair ribbons to please Leif now?

“So what have you been up to with His Highness?” 

“I haven’t been doing anything with Lord Seliph,” said Tinni, her eyes gone wide in surprise at Arthur’s question.

“Not him.I mean Seliph’s cousin.”

“Oh.Well... I’ve been helping Prince Leif study thunder magic, and we’ve both been going over healing magic together with Princess Nanna.”

“So how’s that going?”

“It’s fine.Leif is very determined.”A little blush of pink crept into her cheeks and then she added, “He’s been teaching me how to use a sword.”

“I bet he has.”

Arthur might not have grown up with a gaggle of girls around him like _some people_ , but he wasn’t stupid. Sword practice might mean actually practicing fighting skills, but in Lord Seliph’s army it was just as likely to mean something else entirely.And having Dermott’s sister Nanna in the mix didn’t reassure Arthur any; they’d all taken her for Leif’s girlfriend at first, but instead there was something else going on there.The whole scene around Leonster was weird to Arthur, and now his sister was in the thick of it.

“It’s not like that!” Tinni squeaked, and Arthur decided to believe her.For now.

* * *

Arthur wanted a bath in the morning, wanted to get the grime and traces of blood off his body.  Manster had nothing like a Silessian bathhouse where Arthur could use the heat of a fragrant wood fire to sweat out the filth, but the servants were willing to make the effort to draw a hot bath to please Lord Arthur.  Being the grandson of a treacherous duke (dead), the nephew of an evil king (also dead), and the son of Lady Taillte (still dead) could get Arthur something close to what he wanted, even if trading on his bloodline made him disgusted.  Why any of these people would want to curry favor with someone related to King Blume was past Arthur’s ability to reckon.  He sat in the bath, immersed up to his chin in water that turned his skin a bright pink, and wondered why being part of Lord Seliph’s quest wasn’t enough on its own.

By the time he reached the Great Hall, most of the “young lords” were gone and only Faval lingered over breakfast.The sniper had apparently not learned from Ulster’s hard lesson, because he’d gone and done something equally silly with the very same fortune-teller.

"Yeah.  Found out my dad was the Prince of Verdane." 

“What’s that mean?”Arthur wasn’t completely ignorant of Verdane and its significance, but he liked to make clear that _he_ wasn’t obsessed with political nonsense from a generation ago.   

“Well, he died at Belhalla with Lord Sigurd, which is kind of crappy because I wanted to meet him.And now Lewyn says I’m going to have to reclaim Verdane when all this is over.I guess Patty gets Jungby now.”

“I’m sure Patty’s thrilled,” said Arthur.Faval’s younger sister kept trying to find some one with money and a title who would marry her and set her up for life, so being a great lady of Grannvale should suit her just fine.

“Yeah.She says she’ll never have to scrounge up bread money again.”Faval shook his head at this turn of events.“You oughta see that guy, Arthur.Lester was full of it when he said the old man was a phony.He knew way too much to be faking it.”

"Why would I want to seek out information that could possibly ruin my life?"

So Arthur ended the conversation, took away the remains of his breakfast, and left Prince Faval, uncrowned king of the mysterious land of Verdane, to his destiny.

* * *

As Arthur walked to the training yard, he caught sight of two plaits of pale hair-- almost blue-white beneath the sun-- wrapped in bright ribbons.  Tinni and Prince Leif were, indeed, training with swords; she had the lightweight sword preferred by ladies and the prince was using a blade passed down from his mother that cast light magic from a distance.  Arthur watched them out of the corner of his eye as he passed, though he didn’t stop. 

Prince Leif had three apparent ambitions.  One, it was his destiny to rule all of Thracia and he was going to do it.  Two, he was going to master every type of weapon and form of magic that wasn’t outright banned. Three, he was going to marry Tinni and make her queen of this imaginary kingdom of Thracia that currently consisted of the five cities that Lord Seliph's army had liberated-- Manster, Connaught, Melgen, Alster, and Leif's native Leonster.  The first two were obvious to everyone in the army, and as for the third... Arthur just knew.  Leif had swooped in on Tinni almost from the moment they set eyes on one another in Alster.He already _had_ a pretty golden-haired princess at his side, but Leif called Nanna “little sister” and the way he talked to her wasn’t the way he talked to Tinni... not at all.But Tinni hadn’t protested over the attention, so Arthur let it go... for now, anyway.

Arthur forced his thoughts away from the subject of Prince Leif and on to the tome beneath his arm.His mother had carried it during her days in Sigurd’s army, and out of everything in his possession Arthur felt that this Thoron tome was possibly the most precious-- that and the pendant that his mum had slipped about his neck before Arthur had any memories.Arthur really didn't know how his mother's tome ended in a shop in Melgen, but he had no doubt that this Thoron belonged to his mother.  It didn't just feel right and smell right... he recognized her own hand-writing in the margins of the pages.  Scribbled comments, tips and tricks... and names, doodles, little drawings.  There weren't enough words that he could recapture the sound of his mum's voice, but when he looked at her little sketches of birds, at the page where she'd written their interlocked names-- _Taillte, Arthur, Tinni_ \-- he felt her presence.He could at least hear her laugh, hear wordless singing, almost like birdsong itself, but better.

Arthur wondered if Ulster was right, and spirits would be passing through to their world that night, when the sun went down and the moon rose golden and full.He wondered if his mum would be with them.But for now, he settled down under a tree to protect the tome’s pages from the bright autumn sunlight and studied the words his mother learned in another time and place.

 

* * *

The ghost of Lady Taillte didn’t come to either Arthur or Tinni that evening.Arthur faced additional disappointment in the weeks ahead.He hadn’t mastered Thoron-- hadn’t come close it it, really-- by the time Thracia’s King Travant launched a serious attack on them, but Arthur wasn’t bothered by that.He expected the dragon knights of Thracia would give him the chance to really let his prowess with wind magic shine.  He wasn't deliberately not using Thunder because Ced told him it was dangerous; there just wasn't any reason to favor Thunder when Wind could cut the bastards down as well or better.  He didn't fare as well as he'd hoped to, though, because Thracia's winged troops steered clear of everything that even looked like a mage and targeted the cavalry they thought to be easy pickings. 

A pile of dead Thracians later, Arthur had his revelation.

"That's it.  If I were on horseback, flashing a sword at my enemies and unleashing Thunder on them when they least expect it... I could really do some damage."

“You could, maybe,” said Tinni, but Arthur recognized the doubt in her voice.  “You’d have to learn to ride to do it, though.”

"I can ride."  By which Arthur meant that he could sit on a horse without falling off.

"That's not the same as knowing how to fight on horseback.  I've watched Leif and how he struggles with it." 

"He's mad.  He's trying to learn mounted axe-throwing, mounted archery, and everything else at one time.  I'm pretty sure I can perform an incantation from the saddle and have it go where it's supposed to."

Tinni thought it over, and Arthur was struck by how very _sweet_ she looked when contemplating something.No wonder opponents underestimated what she could do with her Elthunder spell.

"If you really want to learn,” she said in the end, “Lord Finn could teach you. He's been helping Leif... and Finn learned from Leif's father, and everyone says Prince Quan was the best horseman on the continent."

"Everyone here in _Thracia_ says that.  Lord Seliph's friends all say his father Sigurd was the best."

“And Prince Ares says his father King Eldigan was even better,” she replied.“But since none of them are here, you might as well try learning from Finn.”  

* * *

Arthur might have gone off on his own to learn riding, much in the same way he’d mastered wind magic on his own after Granny Tuva showed him the basics.But he didn’t want to disappoint his sister and so did seek out the knight who’d served as Prince Leif’s guardian before Leif was of the age to fight.After a brief period of friction in which Arthur did his best to get across to the older man that he didn't want to be called "Lord Arthur" at any point in time, followed by a longer period of humiliation that consisted of being knocked into the dust repeatedly by the sandbag at the end of the quintain (or having a tun of cold water dumped over him, which was worse), Arthur began to feel he actually did have the knack for mounted combat.He felt a genuine connection to the horse he’d been loaned, which surprised Arthur as he hadn't really liked Mahnya, the pegasus that had taken him from Silesse to Isaach.Combing down his mare at the beginning of each riding lesson became something to look forward to, and Arthur began sneaking in bits of carrot and apple in hopes his horse would like him even more.

“How long can a horse fight?” he asked Finn one morning as they were getting ready for practice. 

“A horse can work for twenty years and more, if it’s cared for properly,” said Finn.“Some knights take pride in riding a single horse through the whole of their career.Your Embarr is already fifteen, so I wouldn’t count on doing so yourself.” 

“Maybe I’m counting on a brief career,” Arthur said.His sense of humor, too dark for most of his acquaintances, often misfired and it did now.Finn just acted as though he hadn’t heard Arthur speak and they went on with the lesson.  

At the end of the day, though, when Arthur was checking Embarr over for sores and burrs, Finn opened up a conversation Arthur hadn’t expected.

"Arthur... do you know how your mother died?"

“My dear aunt and uncle ran her into the grave by being horrible to her.”That’s what Tinni had said, anyway.

“That’s part of the story,” Finn said.Arthur had been searching through his pockets for one more treat to slip to Embarr, but something in the tone of Finn’s voice made Arthur stand up and take notice."At the time she and your sister were brought to Alster, it still had a degree of independence from the empire.  Your mother's sister Ethnia was married to Alster's king, and under her, and the vulnerable enjoyed some protection thanks to her.  Queen Ethnia also extended her aid to those of us fled from Leonster, Manster, and Conote as each of them fell.  Prince Leif and I were among those sheltered in her court."

This was news to Arthur.

"Did you see mum there?"

"Only once, and then briefly."Finn seemed to be on the verge of saying more, but then he closed his eyes and said instead,"I don't have any pleasant memories from that time to share with you, Arthur."

Conversations with Finn always were a little odd, which might've been the reason Arthur had never sought the knight out before riding lessons came into it.  In a way, it reminded Arthur of trying to talk with Ced.  There was this feeling of stepping cautiously across a sheet of ice, not knowing what might be underneath if the ice cracked.

But since Finn had decided to open up about a part of Taillte’s life that Tinni was too young to remember well, Arthur was hanging on to every word.

"In the autumn of 765, when your mother had been in Alster for less than a year, those of us who supported Prince Leif made the attempt to assassinate King Blume when he visited the city."

"I like that goal," said Arthur, but Finn shook his head at the comment.

"We failed, and in that failure, we brought down all who'd aided us.  Alster's king was executed.  Queen Ethnia was sent to a convent where she shortly died, leaving a young daughter brought up in cruel circumstances.  As for Taillte, with her sister gone and King Blume and Queen Hilda now ruling from Alster, her rooms at Alster became her prison.  She gave way to despair, and in the end used her magic to take her own life." 

Now that he thought about it, Arthur recalled that he'd heard hints of this before, but no one had put it so bluntly to him.

"I didn't know that was possible... to kill yourself with magic on purpose."

"Your mother had a peculiar gift by which her power could be be fueled by strong emotions-- anger, hatred, desperation.  Not happiness, strangely enough.  But she turned that gift against herself in order to escape the hell that King Blume and Hilda created for her."

And that was it.A lengthy silence followed while Arthur pondered how on earth to respond.  

"I inherited that,” he said in the end.  “That ability, I mean."

"So did your sister."

Arthur felt a little confused then, wondering if Finn was trying to tell him something without saying it, something awful about Tinni... or something about Arthur himself.Maybe Finn was trying to warn him away from Thoron and the more powerful branches of thunder magic?Why not just tell him, then?

"You were telling me that to apologize, weren't you?” Arthur ventured.“For being a part of the plot that should've taken out Blume and killed mum instead."

And it seemed to Arthur that, for the first time in the conversation, Finn was quite deliberately looking away from him, not making eye contact... trying not to go any further.

"Some failings go beyond the reach of any apology.  We can only do our best to make amends."

"Don't worry about it.  It was Hilda that drove mum over the edge.  Like I said... any plot to kill Blume sounds like a good idea to me.  I'd have wanted to help."

Finn turned back toward Arthur, and a slow but genuine smile warmed his normally austere features. 

"You'd have been all of six years old."

And that was the end of the day’s lesson.Though, as Arthur mulled over the concept of "making amends," he thought he'd figured out why Prince Leif had started this ardent, unswerving courtship of Tinni from the moment they laid eyes on one another. 

"I guess he thinks making her his queen is the best he can do for her, given it was for his sake the whole fiasco happened in the first place."

Arthur felt he had to know several better ways to do right by a girl, but the only thing that came to mind just then was "Leave her be."

* * *

 

Thracia turned out to be packed with surprises.  King Travant basically committed suicide when he left his holy weapon at home before attacking the liberation army.  Arthur, still not ready to ride into battle, got to watch Prince Leif and Finn pick Travant apart. Then one of the dragon knights who kept menacing them turned out to be King Travant’s daughter, who was actually Prince Leif’s sister, who’d been kidnapped and raised under false circumstances but was now willing to join them now that Travant was dead. Also joining the fold was General Hannibal of Thracia, who’d turned against Travant when the king imprisoned _his_ son, who’d been freed by Seliph, and then to top it all off the meek fair-haired boy named Cairpre turned out to be the _true_ son of the long-gone Lex of Dozel.  

“He doesn’t look anything like Lester,” Arthur said to Dermott of the discovery when they were alone in the training grounds of the captured castle of Grutia.He’d graduated from riding against the quintain to riding against actual opponents, and Dermott was letting Arthur have it with a sword that cast thunder magic.  

“He doesn’t look anything like Lex, from what Lewyn said.But Lewyn’s never been wrong before...”

Dermott placed utter trust in the pronouncements of the tactician; Arthur figured that Dermott _had_ to, given that Lewyn’s word was the only evidence Dermott had that his mother was still alive.Lewyn had dangled out no such promises to Arthur and Arthur for his part suspected that the king who’d abandoned Silesse to play as a traveling bard not once but twice was not especially great and might not even be _good_.But the message of the Liberation Army was to bring together what had been parted, to love and trust and forgive (except when it wasn’t, as in the cases of Blume and Travant), and so Arthur had nothing more to say on the latest miraculous discoveries and improbable reunions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the purposes of this story, Queen Ethnia of Alster and Lady Ethnia of Freege are one and the same and Miranda exists in place of Amid and Linda.
> 
> What happened to Taillte here is, of course, one narrative take on Hilda's boast of having "driven [Taillte] into the grave," a line that is open to other interpretations... like outright murder.


	3. The Traveling Merchant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war front moves from Thracia to the Miletos District, leading to a mysterious disappearance, a wedding, and a failed attempt on the life of Arthur's least favorite relation. Meanwhile Arthur makes strides forward in both swordplay and magic... and stumbles backward in other areas.

Arthur saw the amber whirlwind bearing down upon him.  For a moment, it looked to be coming at him so slowly that it he would have time to simply step out of its path, yet an eye-blink later the force of Tornado was tearing at his clothes and his hair and Arthur had to leap away before it enveloped him.  No sooner did his boots touch the floor than Arthur pivoted to aim a return volley at Ced.  He could feel the energy of Thoron coursing through his body, down his arms and out his fingers; he could sense the power in the trail of azure light he sent down the gallery at his opponent.  Then the spell manifested like a flower burst into bloom and formed a crackling ball of energy that nearly obliterated Ced's form.

Arthur watched until the light faded; he saw dark streaks before his eyes for a moment, like bare branches against the sky at dusk.

“I think you have it,” said Ced, and Arthur was pleased to his see opponent actually sweating.

Then again, Ced had restrained himself. As powerful a spell as Tornado was, it was nothing compared to Forseti’s full power.  And really, the heir to the wind god had as little to fear from thunder magic as anyone on earth.  A little exercise in the ornate training hall of Pereluke wasn’t going to do him any harm.

"Let's try it one more time," said Arthur.

It went just like they’d rehearsed it; they paced off as though dueling and Arthur waited as Ced used his powers to summon up a luminous storm.  This time, Arthur didn't dodge.  He stood his ground and let his body feel the full impact of Tornado.  Wind magic didn't singe or sear, it smothered; the air went out of Arthur's lungs as tears welled in his eyes, and it was a battle just to remain upright.  As the power of the spell began to overwhelm him, Arthur felt something inside of him _give_ , like a geyser bursting out of the ground.  Arthur used all the force at his command to send a trail of crackling light in Ced’s direction.  Thoron exploded, twice as large and twice as loud as it had been, almost too bright to look upon.  Arthur looked anyway.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” he heard Ced say. 

Arthur blinked; he could still see flickering bits of light drifting across his eyes.  But Ced didn’t seem to be hurt... just annoyed with Arthur for exploiting his perverse gift.

"I'm healing you because turning a negligent eye to your health would be unethical."  Ced sounded like an old hen as he reached for his staff.  "Honestly I think you ought to spend the rest of the day half-suffocated so it sinks in just how stupid you're being."

"Thanks again," Arthur said with feigned brightness.  He hadn't realized how little air was reaching his lungs until Ced restored him back to something approaching normal health.  He closed his eyes, intending to rest for just a few moments. Flakes of gold and azure sparkled before him in the darkness and and the next thing he knew Ced was shaking him.

"Arthur, come out of it!"

"Huh?"  He looked up into Ced's somber face.  "I don't--"

" _Please stop_." 

There was something in Ced's voice, something in the pressure of his hand upon Arthur's arm, that made Arthur go very still.    

"You're starting to frighten _me_ now," he said, and deliberately removed his arm from Ced's grasp.

Ced grimaced, and Arthur thought he could hear the great heir of Forseti grinding his teeth, but before Ced could say anything more they both turned their heads toward the sound of frantic footsteps.  It was Ced’s sister Fee, running up to them with the word that Julia had gone missing. 

* * *

"You know she didn't disappear on her own," Ced shouted over his shoulder as they made a mad dash through the desolate streets of Pereluke. 

"Yeah."  Julia wasn't impulsive.  She didn't sneak out of camp for fun, didn't go wandering for the sake of wandering, didn't like being anywhere Lord Seliph wasn't.  "There's always been something weird going on with her, though.  Didn't your old man basically palm her off on Lord Seliph?"

Ced muttered _something_ in reply, but Arthur didn’t hear it.  It was like a thunderclap went off in his head, with no warning; Arthur reached for the walls as fragments of light swam around behind his eyelids.  All his senses were a jumble in that moment; he was tasting sounds and hearing light and seeing the color of his own pain, and when the whole horrid experience faded to dull darkness he was mostly just aware of the pounding of his heart.

“Arthur?”

It might have been Ced.  Whoever it was, they sounded scared.

"Damn it."

He could talk, at least.

“Arthur...”

Ced did manage to retreat behind the mask of the imperturbably heroic sage of the winds by the time Arthur could see clearly again.

“I guess I won’t be much help in finding Miss Julia,” Arthur said to Dermott as the amiable prince of Nordion ferried him to the castle on horseback.

“You’ll be even less help when you’re dead,” said Dermott, unruffled as ever.  

For some reason that cut deeper than all Ced’s warnings.  Arthur recovered by nightfall, but he kept with him the sense that, if he _hadn’t_ , they’d all have rolled him into Pereluke’s crypt and gone on their way regardless.

* * *

Julia’s disappearance meant the end of the brief holiday in their campaign.  Pereluke had been a nice change of scene after the endless slog through Thracia, though Arthur was glad to be there in the winter, when the air felt almost like summer in Silesse.  He had reasons to look forward to being on the march again, though.  He was riding in style now for one thing, as Lord Seliph had given him Embarr for keeps and Lewyn declared him an actual knight.  Now Arthur could keep up with the glamorous likes of Ares the Black Knight, and to cut a similarly impressive figure Arthur outfitted his steed in fine trappings of the same brilliant blue as the light cast by Thoron.

From his new grand perch on Embarr, Arthur lifted his keepsake tome to the heavens.

"Do you see me, Mother?  This is yours... and I'll use it to bring down Hilda and send her where she belongs."

“Ahhh.”

Arthur had attracted an admirer, though his admirer was probably biased; it was Tinni gazing up at him with her sky-colored eyes.

"You look so beautiful."

"Heh.  Thanks?"

And there, popping up behind Tinni, was Leif in his crimson-lined mantle, brandishing a very fine sword. 

“Eh?”  Arthur didn’t understand the display at first.

 "Arthur... this sword served me well during our battles in Thracia.  I’d like you to have it."

"Your Brave Sword?"  

Arthur knew there weren’t many of that make extant; this particular sword had been presented to Lord Seliph by Faval’s sticky-fingered sister, who’d likely filched it out of some tomb or temple.  Then it went from Seliph to his beloved cousin Leif, and for it now to pass to Arthur’s hands... well, it was definitely a sign of esteem.  Or was it?  Arthur looked down at the two of them-- Leif with his white armor that matched his new white charger, Tinni in a dress the color of violets, a shade partway between Freege scarlet and Leonster blue.  He wondered if the gift were intended as Tinni’s bride-price. 

“Thanks,” he said aloud.  “I’ll take good care of it.”

He’d clean it up nicely after he’d coated its blade in Hilda’s dark blood.

* * *

Arthur didn't have the chance to use Thoron or anything else against Hilda.  Leif got to her first with his silver arrows, and even as Arthur rode up he saw a column of magic rise above the battlements of Chronos as Hilda warped herself away-- to the safety of Prince Julius and his dark powers, they guessed.  Alive or not, Hilda was out of their hair for the moment.  Leif credited his easy victory to Tinni's loving support, and Arthur decided to accept this sop to family pride and let Tinni take joint credit for downing the vicious queen... for now.  

They were married that evening, by candlelight, in just a little “family” gathering instead of a grand party for all their army like the night Prince Shanan married Larcei.  Leif promised Tinni that they’d do something special when they got home to Alster, have a celebration to lighten the hearts of their people.  Arthur for his part found he was mostly relieved to have the union official, especially with Leif’s “beloved sister” Nanna turning up hand-in-hand with Prince Ares.

“It’s a strange thing to see a little sister married,” said Ced, as they retired to their room just after midnight.  The room assignments shuffled around during the course of the campaign, as Lewyn deemed Ced more suited to Arthur's company than Johalvier.  “Especially when you have to give her away because your father won’t acknowledge that either of you even exist.”

Ced was bitter on his own behalf, not Arthur’s, as there’d been some hard feelings around Fee’s wedding to Lord Oifey a few months before.  Even though by this point everyone knew that Lewyn was Silesse’s former king, and Ced and Fee its prince and princess, Fee went to absurd lengths to avoid so much as speaking with her father and Ced wasn’t on much better terms with Lewyn.  Arthur half-suspected that Fee’d married someone old enough to be her father just to see if it would make her _actual_ father do something about it, which it hadn’t.  

Arthur, for his part, felt bitterness in seeing Tinni in the grasp of her bridegroom mostly in that he felt like he was losing his sister after hardly being able to _see_ her.  Sure, Alster was home to her the way Silesse was home to Arthur, but the idea of them going their separate ways after this war ended just wasn’t the fate Arthur wanted.   He was tempted to say something cutting, about Fee or her marriage or their bizarre family problems, just to annoy Ced and distract himself from the dull ache he was feeling.

Ced changed the subject first, though. He had an intuition for when Arthur was going to cause trouble.

"Now that you've mastered Thoron, I wouldn't mind the chance to study it." 

"Mum marked it up pretty good," Arthur replied.  

He didn’t really want to let the book out of his hands.  If Prince Leif had asked to take a peek of Thoron, Arthur might have given into spite and said no, but Ced was... Ced.  Arthur retrieved the tome from its hiding-place and handed it over, doodles and all.

"I see," Ced remarked as he turned the well-used pages.

"It was the only thing she was sure she could hang onto, so she wrote everything in it.  When I was born, when Tinni was born... stuff like that."

"You truly were born in Silesse."  Ced had found that very page that marked Arthur’s entry into the world.  Taillte had even made a little sketch to celebrate, though she was much better at drawing birds than she was at drawing people.

"Me and Tinni both were.  We don't remember anything else.  I sure don't remember being on the march with Sigurd's army.  The only world I knew was me, and mum, and Tinni, and then one day mum and Tinni weren't there anymore."

"Why weren't you taken by Blume's men?  That part of it never made sense to me."

"I was down at Granny Tuva's learning how to read runes.  Mum was never that good with them; from what Lord Oifey’s told me, she kind of did magic on instinct, so it was real hard for her to teach it.  So she sent me to study with Granny Tuva down the river, and one day I came back from lessons to find our house pretty well destroyed and mum and Tinni both gone."

Ced didn't offer apologies on behalf of the ruling family that’d been powerless to prevent this disaster.  Silesse's conquest by imperial troops was another one of those things outside the bounds of any apology.  He only closed the Thoron tome with the care of a man to whom tomes equalled life and handed it back to Arthur.

"Hey, Ced.  One thing I wanted to ask you..."

"Mm?"

"Your dad.  When did he start going funny?"

Arthur saw the green flash as Ced turned his head.

"How do you mean?"

"See, when I was living with Granny Tuva, for a couple of years this traveling merchant would come by.  He gave me my first Wind tome-- for free-- and said he'd come back every season and he wanted me to show him something new each time.  So I did.  After about three years, I didn't see him again, but I swear he looked exactly like Lewyn."

"Are you alleging that my father, during the period in which he was 'going funny,' used his disappearances to come into your village and monitor your progress as a mage?"

Arthur realized he was skittering across the thin ice now, and this probably wasn’t the time to find out what was underneath.

"I guess I'm asking if that was even possible."

"Yes, I suppose it was possible."

And with that, the candles went out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Lewyn in disguise checking up on Arthur comes, like many weird Jugdral ideas, from the designers' notes.


	4. Partners in Crime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A villager's gift sets Arthur on the trail to find a relic of his mother but this doesn't go his way. Neither, it happens, does being a knight with a gleaming sword-- not for long, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some of the graphic violence listed in the Warnings section.

Reinforcements to save Hilda arrived in the morning.  Nobody was surprised; this possibility was why drinks had been carefully rationed at the wedding dinner.Arthur with his new steed and new fine sword was assigned at last to the front lines, and from atop Embarr he watched the wave of cavalry bearing down upon them from the west, a tight smile upon his face.The enemy would have to get through him to take Chronos, and that was fine by Arthur.   

As the wave of riders broke around him, though, Arthur had to abandon his plan to stun them all with Thoron.Instead he flailed with his sword in a melee whose blurry brutality surpassed anything he’d been through before.As Arthur, dazed and bleeding, continued to strike wildly, something flared up inside of him alongside the usual searing rage.   

_I’m going to be fine.Everything is going to be absolutely fine._  

And then Arthur, Embarr, and the Hero Sword slashed back in a flurry of hooves, teeth, and steel.When he finally ran out of energy, he realized he’d managed to demolish most of the enemy riders on his own.Arthur stared at the filth spattered up his right arm and wondered at himself. 

“That was actually kind of easy,” he said.   

Sure, he’d been roughed up, but there weren’t sparks going off in his eyes this time.It all felt… clean?Pure?Not like anything else he’d experienced before.Killing people without magic actually felt kind of… magical, at least in the giddy state he was in.Besides, he’d defended the gates of Chronos. 

When Lewyn called for volunteers to test the defenses of the enemy stronghold to their west, Arthur raised his hand and no one objected.

* * *

Arthur swore under his breath as he recognized the enemy’s spell but he really wasn’t worried, even as the dark-blue dome of light enclosed him and he felt something unquantifiable  drain away.  Hel felt as weird as it did back when Arthur first experienced it in that long-ago tournament, but this time Arthur knew the nasty surprises were all in his favor.

“Yes, you do that.  Do that to me and just watch what you get.”

Light-headed but clear-eyed, he dug his heels into Embarr's flanks and launched himself at the sorcerer.  The blade of his sword slashed through fabric, muscle, flesh, and bone, and Arthur found himself starting down at a mutilated corpse. 

“Invincible,” Arthur whispered as he turned his bloodied sword over in the sunlight.  “Nobody can touch me when I’m like this.”

He proved as much a heartbeat later, when another sorcerer tried to finish him off and Arthur watched the incantation do absolutely nothing.This sorcerer died on his sword as easily as the first.  

"Is that it?  They didn't leave this place well-defended," said Leif, who’d dispatched the third of this small pack of sorcerors with his silver-bladed axe.  "This has to be some kind of a ruse."

"Yeah."  Arthur agreed with Leif, but right in that moment he felt dazzled by the blue sky and the sunlight and the colors around him, the bright red splashes on the bright green grass.

"I'm guessing they figured Seliph would send most of the army here to deal with this castle so they could open the barricades and stream down on us from the north while our backs were turned," Leif was saying.  "Arthur, I’ll secure this place and you should go up and let everyone know Rados is covered.”

"Okay.  I'm going to check on that village to the north of here to make sure everyone's all right."

“Wait!Don’t you need…”

Arthur ignored his brother-in-law.The sun felt good on his face, and Embarr was running so smoothly she might have been flying, and in that moment he didn’t remember his mother lying dead in the crypt at Alster or the way Hilda’d gotten away or that Cousin Ishtar was still on the loose.He didn’t care that Leif would be making love to Tinni the instant they got back to the rest of the army and he certainly didn’t care that he inexplicably missed falling asleep in Ced’s presence.

The village was more than all right.They were happy to see him, welcomed him as a hero, and then presented Arthur with a ring of braided gold.Arthur felt so content as Embarr carrying him north that he didn’t even mind much when a familiar rider on a pegasus came into view.

“Hey, is something wrong?You’re not sitting right,” Fee shouted at him.

“I’m fine,” he called up to her.  “I can ride for miles like this.”

“Sure you can, and then fall over dead when you get where you’re going.”She started casting her healing spell on him from atop Mahnya, up above Arthur’s head where he couldn’t bat her away.

“You’re crazy,” he said to her as the soft light of the spell washed over him.“I feel great.”

“Me crazy?  I’m not the one with the death wish.  Everybody knows that you’re out of your mind.”Even after the healing ended she kept chiding him.“Oifey said there was crazy stuff going on in Sir Sigurd’s army, but nobody as messed-up as you.  It’s like you _want_ to get hurt.”

"What kind of crazy stuff was there in Sigurd's army?"

Instead of answering Arthur, she thwacked him with her healing staff.

“Cedsy already has enough to worry about.Don’t put one more burden on his poor shoulders.”

Only then did she fly off, leaving one shimmering feather in her wake.

“ _Cedsy_?” Arthur said as he rubbed his stinging shoulder.“What the hell was that even about?”

 

* * *

Arthur got back to the rest of the army and informed Lord Seliph that Leif was all right and Rados had apparently just been a distraction.  While Seliph and Lewyn decided what to do about taking Rados versus storming the barricades to their north, Arthur went to show Tinni his prize from that village.  

“Look.These match, just like our pendants.”

Arthur knew the moment the ring was given to him that he’d seen something just like it, crafted from braided bands of gold in four colors, on his sister’s hand.His memory hadn’t lied; both rings had the four-gold design that celebrated the four branches of respectable magic.The pale strand with a greenish cast represented wind, white gold stood in for thunder and ruddy-hued rose gold for fire, while pure gold in its native yellow represented light magic. 

When Tinni took off her ring, it expanded into a hoop large enough to fit around a man’s thumb, and as they held the rings up against one another they seemed to be perfectly matched.But there was, in fact, something subtly different about Tinni’s ring. As Arthur turned it over in the light, he noticed something engraved inside the band.

“ _Dew + Raquesis: my partner in crime,_ ” Arthur said.“Tinni, how long have you had this?”

“Forever,” she said.“Same as my pendant.Even Hilda never took it away.”

“Let’s swap,” said Arthur, and so they did.  

 

* * *

“Hey, Dermott.”

Dermott rewarded Arthur with a smile that turned into an uncharacteristic little frown as Arthur chattered at him with the magic ring on full display.

“Lady Aideen said that your mother and mine became friends in Silesse.She said they traded rings when they parted ways before Behalla because each one had something the other needed to get by.”

Dermott’s ring was less elaborate than the one in Arthur’s hand, but it was fashioned from a silvery metal rarer than gold and far harder to work.Arthur knew it would’ve cost a fortune, twenty years ago or now.

“These were our mothers’ wedding rings.I’ll trade you back…”

The words died in Arthur’s throat because he saw the pained sincerity that washed across Dermott’s usually placid face.

“I need this, Arthur.”

The fabulously expensive magical ring gave Dermott the extra edge he needed to make himself felt on the battlefield— an edge he needed to live, really, given the kinds of forces they were up against now.And while Dermott inherited both his innate charm and the blood of the Crusader Hezul from his mother, everyone knew his father Dew had been a common thief with no great talent beyond fast-talking and thievery.In a world where they all depended on their “peculiar gifts” to survive, Dermott had come up short, and that ring tipped the odds in his favor.

“Well, I can’t take back what my mum gave freely,” said Arthur.“I’ll take good care of this.”

“Yes, of course,” agreed Dermott, and they left it at that.

* * *

 “I’m sorry you were the one to face Ishtar,” Arthur said an anticlimactic battle later, once he and his eternal roommate were settled into their gilt cavern of a bedroom in Miletos.

“She didn’t land a hit on me.”Ced was resting in a pose of apparent ease, hands folded behind his head as he stared up at the decorated ceiling.

“No, I wanted to take her on.”

Ced didn’t flinch.Maybe he was getting used to Arthur.

“Hilda and Ishtar are two different quantities,” said the heir of the wind god.“If Fee hadn’t been guarding my back during that encounter, I might not be talking with you now.”

Arthur admitted that Fee had grown up at least a little from the time she'd spent half their flight from Silesse poking fun at him… even if she had been weird to him personally in recent days.

“You don’t think I have a chance against her?”

“Against Ishtar with the full strength of Mjolnir?No.”Ced didn’t try to sugarcoat it. “Not you, not Prince Leif, not Lord Oifey, not even Princess Larcei… and not Lord Seliph, either.For anyone to enter into a duel with Ishtar without a holy weapon now would be suicide.I’m not sure Faval could scare her off a second time.”

“Yeah, he ran her off outside Connaught,” said Arthur, but Ced’s thoughts seemed to be elsewhere and soon enough his musings turned from Ishtar’s terrible power to the drama of the Silessian royal house.Ced still was vaguely sore about his sister’s marriage and assumed— correctly— that Arthur was a sympathetic ear on that count.

"But I really did expect that we'd go back to Silesse together... with our father.  He needs to make amends to mother, if nothing else."

Arthur thought for a moment on how so many of their company seemed obsessed with atoning for everyone they'd lost and failed. 

What he said aloud was, "I don't understand how anyone can give up Silesse." 

Every flat green horizon that Arthur woke to make him miss the sparkling peaks of Silesse all over again.As for family, well… Tinni’s marriage made him a brother to Leif, and since Leif was already the sworn kin of the Nordion royals, that made Arthur a part of their family too. But Leif was also a blood relative of Sir Seliph, and since Seliph had taken Lana of Jungby as his bride, Arthur was by extension part of their clan, too.  And with Seliph’s kinsman Lord Oifey married to Fee, then even Ced was, in a sense, Arthur’s family.

Family.  All he'd wanted out of this was to find Tinni, and Arthur now had this motley collection of in-laws and their in-laws and everybody else.  And what very inconvenient connections some of them were…

The magical ring on his finger felt strangely warm.He thought of the long-gone Princess Raquesis, and how Dew promised her a life of somewhat shady adventure that hadn’t amounted to much.He wondered what, if anything, his father had promised his mother, and he pondered what might be inscribed inside the band now on Dermott’s finger.If Dermott fell in battle, Arthur was claiming that ring.It was rightfully his, and anyway… he was technically family. 

 

* * *

 Lord Seliph asked Arthur to lead the charge across the bridge to Chalphy.  The idea of being in the vanguard and protecting magical infantry like Ced and Tinni was still delightful to Arthur, and he accepted without a moment of doubt.  

Three-quarters of the way across the bridge, Arthur had plenty of doubts.Blood sloshed in one of his boots, his left shoulder had been grazed by an arrow, and his sword felt like it was on the verge of shattering in his hand.When green light pulsed across the sky, Arthur thought for a moment it was all happening in his own head.Then he came back to his senses and realized it was the Forseti spell doing what only it could do.

If Ced was breaking out his holy weapon, it was time to get serious.Arthur reached for Thoron and gave his mother’s spell everything he had, even as an enemy knight in a great horned helmet raised an axe meant to cleave Arthur in two.The knight fell from his saddle, tumbling down the cliffs to the beach below with blue energy sizzling around him, but Arthur barely saw it through the glare that filled his own eyes.  

“I’m done for now,” he announced to no one in particular, and he let Embarr take him back to the south anchor of the bridge where the old men and children made up the rear guard.

“Lord Arthur, allow me to help you!”

“Thanks, Cairpre.”

Arthur lay silent as the young heir of Dozel tended to his various wounds.The kid was taller and sturdier than he’d been a few months ago, but from the way “Lord This” and “Lady That” slipped out of his mouth, Arthur could tell Cairpre still hadn’t completely accepted being a noble of Grannvale, and it made him feel a certain sympathy with the little priest.

Even when _he_ was the one being addressed as “Lord This.”

“All right.  I’m back,” he said, after he felt Cairpre had done enough.

But he wasn’t.He nearly fell off Embarr when trying to mount her, and rather than try again and get trampled, Arthur stood with the reins knotted in his hand and his face buried against Embarr’s flank.

“Arthur, please…” 

Arthur looked up at Finn through a haze of spots.

“You must not be so reckless,” Finn was saying.And while it was the expected role of the older warriors to counsel and to caution the new members of the liberation army, on this day and in this place Arthur wanted none of it.

“You left when I was a baby,” said Arthur, chagrined by how thick his tongue seemed and how _bad_ the words sounded. “You can atone for what happened to Mum until the end of forever, and you can raise Tinni up to the highest place in Thracia, but you don’t get to tell me what to do.Got that?”

“Arthur…”

This time, Arthur managed to get back on Embarr.He rode off toward the bridge, heedless that he could hardly see and half-wishing that he couldn’t hear anything either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Arthur and Tinny both have Magic Rings, one of which originally belonged to Master Knight Raquesis and Dermott has the Pursuit Ring that used to be Taillte's. Like hell Dermott's going to trade that away.
> 
> As for Arthur discovering the euphoria of pure melee combat, just because Miracle/Wrath abuse doesn't feel as damaging when thunder magic isn't involved doesn't mean it's good for him.


	5. Wrath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur finally gets his chance to use his gifts against Aunt Hilda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains fairly graphic violence and fantasies regarding graphic violence. Arthur vs Hilda was never gong to be nice. Also contains another reference to suicide.

The siege of Chalphy lasted less than a week, and most of that was because Lord Seliph insisted on saving some kids who were hiding out on the sea-cliffs before they took on Emperor Arvis. While they waited for Seliph to get back, Arthur spent time in the company of Leif, Nanna, and Ares as the four of them rode circuits around the fortress, picking off what remained of Chalphy’s mage army.

“This isn’t very sporting,” he complained to Ced in the evening. It didn’t seem to Arthur that the emperor’s guards had their hearts in it.

“Don’t make this into a sport,” Ced replied, his lips compressed in a humorless straight line. “It makes you sound as deranged as your cousin Ishtar.”

The word went around once they took Miletos that Ishtar and her demonic lover had a wager going on which of them could murder one of the “rebels” first. Ced spoiled that bet by winning his duel with Ishtar, but the idea that their lives were worth little more than a coin-toss to their enemies stung every member of their army… especially for the ones who held the illusion that at least _some_ of their opponents had to be high-minded people who respected the rules of combat and such.

Arthur didn’t have any illusions and so wasn’t disappointed in Cousin Ishtar the way that Tinni was.

-x-

The old bishop protecting the kids turned out the be guarding Seliph’s own inherited holy weapon, the Tyrfing blade, so in that case virtue wasn’t purely its own reward. Emperor Arvis fell to Seliph in a way that suggested his heart wasn’t entirely in the fight, either, and they had a brief mad celebration in Chalphy Castle, more frenetic than all the weddings combined, and then it was back to the business of war, though with one more fully-fledged Crusader in their number.  
   
The ducal seat of Edda fell in a day.  
   
"I thought Miletos was bad, but this place is miserable,” Arthur said as he rode Embarr through Edda’s silent streets. “Everyone looks like they're on the verge of tears, and it's not from happiness."  
   
"Edda mourns because while Lord Seliph saved them, he didn't bring Edda its own redeemer,” Ced replied from his perch behind Arthur. “There's no heir to the line of Bragi because Father Claude never took a wife."  
   
“He had the chance to take up with Mum. She had a thing for him," Arthur confessed.  
   
“Hmm?"

Ced must have seen it, though— Claude's name scribbled around the margins of the Thoron spell complete with hearts and flowers.

”I think she had a little..."  
   
"Infatuation?"  
   
"Yeah, for a while.  But she got over it when somebody saved her from pirates.”  

Arthur sensed from his mum’s scribblings that she’d bounced from one infatuation to the next, one day doodling the name of the serene and graceful Lord of Edda (not that Arthur knew the man, but of course he’d heard stories) and the next fixating on a young knight from Leonster with nice manners and a fast horse, and now and then sparing a thought for her childhood friends Lex of Dozel and Azel of Velthomer. Though, when he thought about it, his mum had been also very, very young at the time. Tinni was the same age now that Taillte had been when Arthur was born, maybe even a little older.  

“If things had gone differently, this might all have been mine,” he said with a sweep of his arm. “That’s fine by me, though. I don't want Edda.  I can't wait to get back to Silesse."   
   
"You're expected to reclaim Freege.” Ced had that lecturing note in his voice, like a scholar making some proclamation from a university tower for all that he was practically speaking into Arthur’s ear.  
   
"To hell with Freege,” said Arthur without even needing to consider it. "Mum didn't want anything to do with the place and neither do I."  
   
"You can't abandon an oppressed people because of your personal disagreement with their rulers.  _Former_ rulers."  
   
"Why can't I?  I don't see why some place in Grannvale I've never seen has anything to do with me.  Give it to one of the Jungbys-- there's more of them than there is land to go around. Lester needs something to do, so he can have it.”

Arthur didn’t need to even turn back to know what sort of expression Ced was wearing now. It’d be the sour, humorless one.  
   
"Lord Seliph has never seen the land of his birthright before now, but I don't see him leaving all of Grannvale to its fate after our victory.  Do you?"  
   
"No, but I'm not Seliph.  None of us is... isn't that the point?” 

Arthur had figured out quite some time ago that Lewyn held Seliph to a higher standard than the rest of them. Seliph wasn’t allowed to dishonor the corpse of Emperor Arvis the way Leif had thrown King Travant’s naked body over a horse and sent it trotting off toward camp.  
   
"No, that's not the point of all this.” And now came the exasperated sigh, right on cue. "Look at Tinni.  She spent the worst years of her life in Alster, but she's willing to go back there to help the people who suffered even as she was suffering."  
   
"And I'm sure Tinni's desire to get back to the place where mum did herself in has nothing whatsoever to do with her beloved husband, new king of Leonster and Alster and I don't remember what else."

Ced’s arms around him went tense in a way Arthur didn’t expect.  
   
"Your mother took her own life?"  
   
"Yeah.  You didn't know that?  You seem to know everything."  
   
"I don't know everything," and now Ced sounded like he really was only a young man of Arthur’s own age. "Arthur, I didn't mean to pick at... look, I'm sorry.”  
   
“Don’t worry about it.”

It was almost _nice_ to be able to throw Ced for once, and even better that he hadn’t needed to bring up Lewyn to do it.

-x-  
   
Freege was in their path whether Arthur wanted it or not. And he did want it, in the sense that he wanted it conquered, because taking Freege meant taking Hilda. Taking Hilda meant killing her.  Killing her meant the opportunity to make Hilda hurt in as many ways as Arthur's imagination could devise. He wanted to strike her as many times as he could with his sword and watch the blood come gushing out. He wanted to slice Hilda's head from her shoulders, load it into a ballista and send it flying over the walls at Belhalla for Cousin Ishtar to see. He wanted to hit her over and over again with Thoron, increasing the pain with every blast so she went from twitching to writhing to helpless screaming and finally to death.  
   
Arthur wished there'd been an heir to Father Claude's holy Valkyrie staff so they could raise Hilda from the dead once he'd killed her and then kill her a second time.

Part of Arthur wanted to share these fantasies with Tinni as they closed in on Freege, as his sister surely would understand where he was coming from, but Arthur held back because right now, Tinni didn’t seem herself. She looked peaky. Arthur wondered briefly if the violet robes of New Thracia’s princess just didn’t suit her and then decided no, his sister really did seem wan.

“You’re not doing the… the rage thing, are you?”

“No. Father told me not to,” she replied. “But if I see Hilda, I might… I think I will.” 

She was twisting her pendant around and around, the one that matched Arthur’s exactly, with a polished ruby like a bead of blood set back-to-back with a sapphire. Arthur looked at the six-rayed star that danced across the sapphire as Tinni played with it.

“I’ll handle her,” he said.  
   
-x-

The assault on Freege wasn’t patient and it wasn’t all that clever. The battle on the bridge from Miletos was a work of tactical art compared to the frontal assault meant to pin Hilda’s forces up against the very cliffs that should’ve made the citadel impossible to capture. Arthur joined the rest of the cavalry in the first wave of the attack, knowing that they had a second wave of mages and archers at their back… not to mention a couple of dirty tricks.

If it’d been in Arthur to feel sorry for anyone serving Hilda he might’ve felt it then, given what they had raining down on them, but as it was he felt a dull satisfaction as Lord Seliph and Prince Ares hacked into the enemy with their holy swords. Prince Shanan did the same with his Balmung blade, but without a horse to carry him back behind the lines he looked like a good target for Hilda’s people… until he disappeared in a flash of light, ported off to safety by Leif’s latest sneaky bit of staff magic.

Arthur heard a howl of frustration from the enemy as he and Embarr hurtled into the convenient gap left by Shanan. Deep in the ranks of the Freege warriors was where he was going to find _her_.

Hilda had the bad grace to chortle at him. 

“You’re Taillte’s kid. I drove that woman into her grave. Come to avenge her death, have you?”

Monster wasn’t even the word for it, Arthur thought as he got his first real look at his aunt. People made out like she was beautiful, but all he could see was the hate in her dark eyes, the twisted gash of her red-painted mouth as the ugly words spilled out of it. Arthur felt a cool glassy surface form over the red-hot seething mess of his own rage, and he smiled. 

“Well, I didn’t want my sister getting her hands dirty…”

“Is that so? In that case, I’ll take you with me to _hell_.”

She was slow, he thought, as her hands flickered with the scarlet glow of fire magic. He’d trained against Ced, who could whip up a windstorm in a heartbeat. He could handle her.

Since Arthur wasn’t stupid he didn’t try to use Thoron against her infamous Bolganone spell. Hilda could bleed just like anyone else, and with his sword he struck her once, twice, four times in all, blade slicing into metal and bone, even as she enveloped him in an inferno. The air around him felt more like boiling water instead of open flame, seeping through his armor and clothing all the way to his skin, but Arthur kept on flailing at her. He could smell his own hair burning and he could taste a spatter of blood on his lips. He hoped it was Hilda’s.  
   
_Yes, burn me. Do the worst you can to me and I'll turn it back on you..._  
   
Everything was warm, and Arthur knew in a few minutes it _was_ going to hurt like hell, or beyond hell, but he didn’t need those minutes. Hilda was done. From the high ground she had to see her army falling around her-- Faval's holy arrows singing to the south, Ced's wind magic lighting up the sky to the west. Shanan and his divine sword were carving circles through the Freege warriors with Larcei at his back doing nearly as much damage all on her own.  
   
Hilda was done and she was too stupid to see if just then, because she was looking at Arthur and seeing Taillte and not understanding the difference. She aimed another volley of Bolganone at him, but Arthur stood his ground as the streams of liquid fire and crimson light passed harmlessly around him. It was worth everything to see the shock on Hilda’s face as the red glow faded and she realized she hadn’t even singed him this time. He knew he should've used his sword then, but the thunder in his soul rumbled at Arthur to give Hilda what she truly deserved, and a clean death wasn’t it.  
   
"This is for you, Mum.”

Hilda disappeared in a ball of searing, crackling azure light, and Arthur held on long enough to see what remained of Hilda hit the earth and stay there. Smoke was pouring out of her armor and it looked beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's possible to look at Arthur's (canonical) desire to keep Tinni's "hands clean" with regard to Hilda as some kind of moral development, maybe.
> 
> Meanwhile, one tossed-off line from Tinni indicates she's actually reconnecting with her non-Freege family. Arthur lets that wash over him like he does other inconvenient things.

**Author's Note:**

> This version of the 'fic uses the names that are going to be used in the upcoming Project Naga translation for FE4: (Dermott instead of Delmud, Tinni instead of Tinny) which includes the names used in NoA localizations of FE13 DLC. In truth I prefer some of the names used by the previous patches but hey, I'm picking this system and sticking with it unless/until we get a full localization for FE4.
> 
> This version is also revised to change some character heights to be more in line with the Treasure artbook instead of my previous headcanons (Dermott is no longer shorter than Arthur, for example) and the first three chapters are overall being tweaked to lead to a somewhat more... fluffy... ending I'd planned in the original 'fic. It's still not a very fluffy ending but definitely less negative than it was going to be.
> 
> As far as Gen1 pairings go, most of them are revealed in the text of the 'fic itself but this is a universe in which Noish/Ayra happened so no, it's not a predestined kind of universe.


End file.
